Lancet Surveys of Iraq War Casualties - ORB Survey Compared With Lancet Studies

ORB Survey Compared With Lancet Studies

On September 14, 2007, ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent UK based polling agency, published an estimate of the total casualties of the Iraq war. The figure suggested by ORB, which was based on survey responses from 1,499 adults, stands at 1,220,580 deaths, with a margin of error of 2.5%. This estimate, although conducted independently, and using a different polling methodology, is consistent with the Lancet findings if accounting for the additional 14 months covered by the ORB poll.

On 28 January 2008, ORB published an update based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.

This ORB poll estimate came under criticism in a peer reviewed paper called "Conflict Deaths in Iraq: A Methodological Critique of the ORB Survey Estimate", published in the journal Survey Research Methods. This paper "finds fundamental flaws in the data underpinning ORB’s estimate", and concludes that the ORB data "are not suitable for deriving any credible estimate but, given proper scrutiny, it is clear that ORB has overestimated by a wide margin.